


Blackhole

by WritingStag



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/F, I apologize for hurting Holtz like this, and fluff, i feel like she needs more back story, much fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7629934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingStag/pseuds/WritingStag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's been a hole in your chest as long as you can remember. It's always been there and you've learned to livve with it more or less. You learned how to cope and how to hide that pain under layers of clothes, quirks and eccentricities.  The black hole in your chest is part of you and you don't see it going away anytime soon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackhole

There’s been a hole in your chest for almost as long as you can remember. It’s never stopped you from being you and you always cover it with quirks and eccentricities. Most people don’t seen past the weird clothes and yellow tinted glasses. You cover the hole with layers of clothes and you even consider a tattoo for a while. You never get one though and maybe that’s for the best. 

Sometimes late at night when you feel like it’s dragging you down you take sharpie and draw elaborate swirls and patters across your own chest. There’s something soothing about the way the ink feels and just knowing it’s there under your clothes makes you feel like you have an extra piece of armor. Abby never asks when she sees black spires and twirls peeking above your collar bones and your grateful because you don’t even know what you’d say if she asked.

And then Erin drops into your life then Patty and for the first time since you were 12 and your mother died you feel like you have a family. Abby has been amazing but it’s hard to feel like family with just one other person. With the three of them it feels like home. Erin will dance with you to you 80’s pop music and Patty reads to you and teaches you about the history of new York and life is wonderful and vibrant and you finally feel like your energy and enthusiasm aren’t just a façade it’s how you really feel.

Despite all this sometimes the big hole in your chest crumbles around the edges, making your entire torso constrict and making it impossible to breath. You thank god you don’t smoke because if you did these episodes wouldn’t be kept secret. Whenever you have an attack you ‘accidentally’ cause a small explosion that reeks. You apologize brightly to the other ghostbusters and take it up to the roof to air out. You don’t think they notice you don’t come back down immediately and you lay on the roof and count the stars or the honks of the cars below and draw on your chest.

You don’t know what words to use to describe the hole. You just know it drains the color from the world and mutes sounds and makes you want to do something stupid and probably hurtful. It makes you cry sometimes but you’d never admit that. You hate it so much that you feel this way when you have no reason to be so upset. You have a wonderful family now, you love your work and you’re steadily paid for the first time in your life. But that ragged hole won’t go away no matter how hard you try to make it. You’re surrounded by brilliant minds that could probably explain the feeling to you if you told them but you don’t want them to think any differently of you.

You don’t want them to know how much it hurts.

It’s a chilly November afternoon. New York isn’t exactly a tropical state so November may as well be December so Erin is more than a little surprised when she stumbles upon you on the roof with your shirt off and sharpie in hand. You’d been trying to draw an artistic rendition of the Fibonacci sequences to calm yourself when her gasp makes your head jerk up.

“Jesus Holtz!” she says too loudly making you wince involuntarily. “It’s barely 5 degree’s out here! What are you thinking?” She slides her own hoodie off immediately and sits next to you but not before wrapping her hoodie around you.

“You swore.” Is all you can manage to say because you may be a brilliant nuclear engineer but right now you feel stupider than you ever thought possible.

“I... What? Really is that your take away?” Erin asks and you can tell she’s exasperated with you. You drop your chin to your chest and eye the ink that’s still drying against your pale skin. Erin notices and scoots closer, gently placing her hand on your forearm. “Hey, are you okay?” She asks and the concern you hear in her voice makes you feel all sorts of things but mostly guilt. You don’t trust your voice to answer so you just shrug. Erin doesn’t talk again and you don’t say anything. You appreciate that she doesn’t push you to talk like Patty would and she doesn’t mother hen you like Abby. 

Erin eventually lays her head on your shoulder and takes your hand, fingers tangle together and distantly you wonder where the hell she got the confidence to pull this off. You let her and you feel like a small chip might have just been placed where your hole is and it hurts just a little less. Erin eventually get you to put your shirt back on (she lets you finish your drawing first almost as if she knows how important it is to you) and drags you back into the firehouse where she sits you at your desk with a large mug of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows in it. She tells you to invent something great and then she leaves you be and the whole exchange leaves you reeling because it’s a different type of care you’d just been shown, one that panders to your needs exactly as you needed them met. 

(Erin wakes up the next morning with a small device that vaguely looks like a bracelet on her desk and a sticky note that says it will repel slime and she knows it’s Holtzmann’s way of thanking her.)

Slowly you start feeling less empty. Erin has started doing small things, just little things that you’re sure the other two ghost busters don’t notice but they mean the world to you. A can of pringles left on your desk, a post it note with a proton pack and a heart drawn on it. Mugs of coffee in the morning made exactly the way you like. These things pile up and slowly the hole in your chest shrinks to a more manageable size. It’s no longer a monstrous hole instead maybe just a crack in your façade which you’ll take any day over what came previous.

One day while working you notice Erin fidgeting more than usual. You pause in your tinkering to watch her, eyes narrowed because there’s just something off about the way she’s fidgeting. Her chest rises and fall in jagged motions and as her eyes dart around frantically you figure it out. She’s having a panic attack. You stand and cross over to her, determined to help because whether she knows it or not she’s done so much for you. You grab her arms and make her meet your eyes. This close you can hear her little hiccup sobs and you wish you could do something make them stop. “Breath with me Erin.” You tell her and try and get her to mimic your slow breaths. She tries, you can tell but her body isn’t listening. Her grip on you is tight and she’s really starting to panic, seemingly unable to really breathe. She looks at you and you can tell she terrified. You don’t really know what to do in this situation so you just pull her in against your body and hold her as tightly as you can. She clings to you and her tears soak through your jumpsuit which you’d neglected to take off from the earlier bust. 

You rock her back and forth while humming, doing everything you can think of to calm her down. Eventually after what feels like hours to you she begins to calm and you lead her over to the couch and get her settled. You try to leave to go get her a mug of something warm and soothing but her grip on your wrist is tight and when you turn back to look at her she weakly whispers for you to say. After all she’s done for you, you can’t say no so you simply settle next to her on the couch and let her lay her head on your shoulder. It kills you to sit this still and quietly but it’s what Erin wants so you do it for her. Once she seems more herself she gets up slowly and you stand with her. “Thank you.” You tell her earnestly it’s no problem, you were happy to do it.  
Once Erin goes home for the night you begin googling about panic attacks and anxiety. You want to be ready in case it happens again and according to everything your reading it will inevitably happen again.

True to your word, the next time it happens (a little over 2 weeks later) you are ready. You encourage her to tell you five things she can see followed by four things she can touch. As she’s listing things off you can see its working, slowly but surely. You get to 2 things she can small and she replies with singed hair (yours) and motor oil (also you) which makes you laugh a little which in turn makes her smile a little and you take a chance at cracking a joke which makes her really smile and you feel warm in your chest. Once Erin is feeling a little more normal you pull her over to your work table and show her your latest invention; A grenade that when thrown should (should you haven’t tested it yet) stun a ghost to near paralysis. As you talk Erin becomes more and more engaged and you don’t regret spending an entire night googling ways to help her.

It’s barely a couple nights later when Erin finds you on the roof (your fully dressed this time.) Your clearly not in any distress and you think she knows you just came up here to test your latest gadget because when you turn and see her she smiles and says “Five things you can see Holtz.” You smile and nimbly hop down from where you were crouched above the machine the size of a very large dog.

“Four things I can touch.” You reply. You set your wrench down before giving her your undivided attention. “What’s shakin bacon?” She looks shy almost and you wonder why. 

“Holtzmann, Holtz, Holtzy and Jillian.” She replies which confuses you. Before you can ask her what the heck she means she’s taken the few steps needed to close the distance between the two of you and she’s kissing you. It’s soft and tender and you can feel her hands, one resting on your shoulder the other around the back of your neck. You don’t even have time to think and respond before she’s pulling away, eyes flitting everywhere and you know it means she’s freaking out. Before she gets a chance to say anything your grab her arms gently and pull her back to you, kissing her back. 

It’s awkward at first. You may flirt lots but you never really get anywhere and this is your first kiss (excluding that time Bobby Hindersmith kissed you under the slide in second grade to which you blown a raspberry and wiped your lips clean over and over) You stand there in the chilly January air kissing before Erin breaks away and hugs you, burying her blushing face against your neck.

“Four things I can touch.” She whispers and you smile widely and laugh and you’re just so happy you feel like your chest is going to burst. You rock and spin a little and soon Erin is laughing with you. Until this moment you’d lived with a hole in your chest and now the hole was gone and instead it was replaced with warmth and laughter, so much so you can’t remember what anything other than this feels like. You look up at the sky and smile so wide it hurts. You’ve finally found your home, you’ve finally found you family and you’ve finally found the last pieces to cover the hole.


End file.
